Leaked Deus Ex Preview Build Impresses Fans

Deus Ex: Human Revolution, one of the most anticipated releases of fall, just came a bit early. Well, sort of.

A lengthy 10-12 hour preview build of Human Revolution, sparingly sent out to press, leaked onto torrent sites this week. It opens with an introductory cinematic and carries the player through a lengthy portion of the game's story. The build is stable but far from finished.

Not since Crysis 2 has there been such an early leak of a massive game. However, the Crysis 2 leak was a beta of the full game. This Human Revolution preview build is more comparable to the Half-Life 2 leak years ago, which only presented a portion of a work-in-progress.

It's uncertain whether this leak is tied at all to the attack on Deus Ex's website, last month. The developer and publisher could not be reached for comment, at this time.

Surprisingly, developer Eidos Montreal has allowed users to comment about the leak on the game's forum. Community Manager Kyle Stallock even encouraged users to share links to non-press reviews and comments on the leak. Torrents of the leak remain available on popular torrent sites, yet to be taken down by publisher Square Enix - not that it's certain Square could stop the leak, at this point, if it wanted.

After months of delays and speculation from series fans on whether this would be a worthy successor to one of the PC's most beloved games, this leak might have helped the game more than hurt it. There are posts on Eidos' forum and NeoGAF.com, claiming the quality of the game surprised them and they are now making a pre-order.

"Augmented edition pre-ordered. I'm quite fucking hyped for this game," one poster wrote on NeoGAF, after reading others' impressions of the leaked build.

Of course, this doesn't change the simple fact that leaking this build was an illegal act - about as illegal as downloading it. So, don't download it! Watch YouTube clips of the leak or something. Oh, crap. Is that illegal too? I need to go check with our lawyers...for 10 hours.